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How come the German Army never used heavy-caliber machine guns like the US M2 or the Soviet DShk as an anti-aircraft machine gun for AFVs? Also, why didn't the GDR convert the StG44 design to use 7.62x39 rounds instead of adopting the AK series? The Czechs by comparison developed their own rifle design instead.

montypython wrote:How come the German Army never used heavy-caliber machine guns like the US M2 or the Soviet DShk as an anti-aircraft machine gun for AFVs?

I don't believe they made any HMGs for ground use, preferring to use 2mm and 3.7mm AAA for mobile anti-aircraft work. It's kind of debatable how useful a lone M2 was for anti-aircraft work, although the USA found it pretty good for use against light vehicles and infantry. There is also the matter, possibly more important, that the Germans built their tanks with commanders' cupolas for maximum visibility while buttoned up, which I think precluded a HMG mount, and anyway you have to unbutton to use the HMG.

Also, why didn't the GDR convert the StG44 design to use 7.62x39 rounds instead of adopting the AK series? The Czechs by comparison developed their own rifle design instead.

Well, the factories in the DDR that would have produced the StG44 would have either been destroyed during the war or stripped by the Soviets afterward, so new production facilities probably had to be built from scratch anyway, and the AK series was a damn good weapon, probably better in several respects than the StG44, and was the Warsaw Pact standard, so there was no real reason to go back. I think they used existing stocks of them for a while, until they had enough AKs to replace them all.

montypython wrote:How come the German Army never used heavy-caliber machine guns like the US M2 or the Soviet DShk as an anti-aircraft machine gun for AFVs?

The 13mm (MG131 German heavy MG) was pretty much given only to the Luftwaffe in use in various mountings, Luftwaffe units adapted them in various ad-hoc ground mountings but Germany spent so much of the war under friendly skies and when they began to lose them they went to purpose built AA trucks on the SDK series or Hanomag variants or conversions of Panzer III or Panzer IV chassis. There were MG34's on AA mounts for various tanks but call it German military mindset they went with purpose built dedicated mobile AA platforms towards the end of the war. And at the start the MG34 was just fine for shooting down what planes got through the fighter screen's to engage German tanks.

Pablo Sanchez wrote:

Also, why didn't the GDR convert the StG44 design to use 7.62x39 rounds instead of adopting the AK series? The Czechs by comparison developed their own rifle design instead.

Well, the factories in the DDR that would have produced the StG44 would have either been destroyed during the war or stripped by the Soviets afterward, so new production facilities probably had to be built from scratch anyway, and the AK series was a damn good weapon, probably better in several respects than the StG44, and was the Warsaw Pact standard, so there was no real reason to go back. I think they used existing stocks of them for a while, until they had enough AKs to replace them all.

The Volkspolizei(People's Police) and the Nationale Volksarmee(National People's Army formed in 1956 from the paramilitary units of the VP) both used the StG44 up to the 1960's. By that time the AK series turned into the standard WP assault rifle, which were a better weapons in many ways (lighter and more durable for example). Many guns that survived the war, ended up in Chechoslovakia and Yugoslavia(probably war reparations?) which limited the number of available guns in the DDR.

Just to reiterate myself: by the time the DDR started a massive rearmament in the late 1950s the StG44 was an obsolete weapon with bugs and non-(WARPAC-)standard ammo.

.50cal machine guns are almost useless as anti aircraft guns against fixed wing aircraft by 1939. People adapted them originally as a defence against strafing, on the assumption that the strafing plane would have a typical interwar armament of two 7.62 or 7.92mm machine guns on a 175mph biplane. In this situation .50cal wasn’t too bad.

Against heavier firepower, or a plane dropping bombs or firing rockets, or a much faster plane, all the .50cal is likely to accomplish is to be a distraction firing tracers. That’s not useless, tracer fire is very good for throwing off pilots aim, but a 7.62mm machine gun can just as well throw tracers in the air. Russia kept up heavy use of quad 7.62mm machine guns in WW2 for this role because they just couldn’t make enough heavy automatic guns.

The .50cal guns persisted on US and Soviet block tanks on AA mountings mainly because… well why not, the weight doesn’t matter and they are still an advantage against ground targets. Also, while fixed wing aircraft are unlikely to be bothered by .50cal, helicopters are far more vulnerable. Most Euro tanks have simply never had a .50cal. They perfer to have as much ammo as possibul for one caliber. The US doesn't care about that because the M1 Abrams already has a huge capacity for machine gun ammo, some 10,000 rounds in all which is about three times what most tanks carry. The Russians just accept a very small .50cal ammo load. With only three man tank crews the commander will not often use his .50cal anyway.

In reality even in the early part of WW2 no anti aircraft gun smaller then a 37mm cannon was actually satisfactory. The Germans themselves didn’t even like the 2cm guns very much, especially the single and twin mounts (fed from 30 round magazines instead of belts no less) but Hitler’s rapid mobilization of the German war machine precluded universal adaptation of heavier guns. 37mm can bring down a fighter with one or two hits and has enough range to start shooting before the enemy has employed his own weapons.

Postwar, jets flew so fast gunners could not actually aim at them, they could just create wallsof gunfire the plane had to fly through. For that role just about any gun was useful… but only if you had huge amounts of manpower to spare like North Veitnam or China in Korea. For effective (as in actually aiming to score a hit and a kill) AA fire you really needed a 57mm gun minimal, and radar controls. The famous ZSU-23-4 was pitted against a similar vehicle with twin 37mm guns in trials, but the heavier gun system lost for unknown technical reasons. Course its also worth noting that the Russian 23mm cartridge is more then twice as powerful as typical 20mm cartridges.

When I read "small arms" in the title I thought this thread would be about German sidearms (I noticed the difference shortly afterwards).

Still I think it would be interesting to discuss the amazingly successful design of the Luger P08, whose design was already 40 years old when it was being used by Nazi Germany in the Second World War, and how it was scheduled to be replaced with the Walther P38, but not because the Luger's design was dated, but rather because the Walther was comparatively cheaper and easier to manufacture.

Akkleptos wrote:When I read "small arms" in the title I thought this thread would be about German sidearms (I noticed the difference shortly afterwards).

Generally speaking a "small arm" is any weapon that can be carried and used by a single man, but the definition can also include small crew-served weapons like heavy machineguns. I think the dividing line is often place at 20mm, meaning that anything 20mm and up is considered a kind of artillery. All pistols are small arms, but not all small arms are pistols.

Still I think it would be interesting to discuss the amazingly successful design of the Luger P08, whose design was already 40 years old when it was being used by Nazi Germany in the Second World War, and how it was scheduled to be replaced with the Walther P38, but not because the Luger's design was dated, but rather because the Walther was comparatively cheaper and easier to manufacture.

The Parabellum was a good design but it was ridiculously expensive for a sidearm, which are almost a decorative item in practical terms. Given that and the fact that it was only ever issued by Germany and had a 30-year service life I wouldn't call it amazingly successful. If you want an example of such a pistol, check out the Browning Hi-Power or the M1911.

Pablo Sanchez wrote: The Parabellum was a good design but it was ridiculously expensive for a sidearm, which are almost a decorative item in practical terms. Given that and the fact that it was only ever issued by Germany and had a 30-year service life I wouldn't call it amazingly successful. If you want an example of such a pistol, check out the Browning Hi-Power or the M1911.

The Luger was developed in 1898 and adopted by Switzerland already in 1900, chambered in 7.65 mm Luger. Germany Navy followed in 1904 with the 9 mm Para(bellum) version. So it had a service life of over 40 years in Germany and it was in fact used in many minor countries at least until the 1950's. Not comparable to Browning HP perhaps, but pretty good for a pistol designed in the 19th century. Even the M1911 is a significantly more modern design; this was a period when hand gun technology still advanced rapidly.

Marcus Aurelius wrote:The Luger was developed in 1898 and adopted by Switzerland already in 1900, chambered in 7.65 mm Luger. Germany Navy followed in 1904 with the 9 mm Para(bellum) version. So it had a service life of over 40 years in Germany

If you count its use by a service in which sidearms were almost purely decorative, and further count the several years it remained in service after it had been officially replaced because there were existing stocks held over, sure.

and it was in fact used in many minor countries at least until the 1950's.

As a service pistol, or in a grab-bag "we happen to have these laying around" sense? By the latter standard there's a lot of totally obsolete weapons still in active service in "many minor countries." After all, Pashtun gunmen and African child soldiers need guns, too, and if there's a 1880-style Martini-Enfield knockoff available...

Not comparable to Browning HP perhaps, but pretty good for a pistol designed in the 19th century. Even the M1911 is a significantly more modern design; this was a period when hand gun technology still advanced rapidly.

The M1911 is an improved version of the Colt M1900, just as the P'08 was an improved version of the earlier 7.65 Luger type. The "prototypes" of both pistols were approximately contemporaneous.

If German pistols were so awesome, why did they feel a need to introduce the Vis (a 1911 knockoff) into service, and keep manufacturing it in the original factory throughout the war?

PeZook wrote:If German pistols were so awesome, why did they feel a need to introduce the Vis (a 1911 knockoff) into service, and keep manufacturing it in the original factory throughout the war?

Because that's what they did everywhere else? PeZook if you read a good WWII book which talks about the various makes and models of German tanks, transport and airplanes is the fact that everything they took over they used and used extentivly because they never really standardized, why the MG34 was used right up until the end of the war and more importantly produced until the end of the war. Why they reconverted Panzer II chassies again and again for various special purpose lash-ups. Because they had nothing else they went with what they had until it could no longer work anymore.


In short they kept building Vis's because they needed pistols period. Much like how the Japanese kept producing Nambu's one of the unsafes and general all around shittiness pistol ever made in existence. For those that don't recall (Nambu if it was loaded it could fire, no safety lock, if you dropped it 1/3 times it would fire, even on dirt and it was both inaccurate and under-powered.)

The Germans kept just about every small arms factory they captured going, not to mention the entire Czechoslovakian heavy arms industry producing tank hulls and artillery as heavy as 210mm. Many positions on the Atlantic wall had Czech VZ37 machine guns (this is the gun the Bren is based on) for example, produced as Maschinegewehr 37(t). They had a factory captured in Belgium making the Browning High Power as Pistole Modell 35(b). Even in Norway the Germans kept an arsenal that made 40mm Bofors guns running throughout the war. The Yugo factories were not nearly so productive owning to partisan strength being counted in terms of in army corps.

The Germans of course also reused huge amounts of captured equipment, converting them to use German calibers when possible. Weapons that could not be converted were issued to garrison units or the Atlantic Wall fortifications so that limited ammo supply was not as serious a problem. In some cases, such as Soviet 76.2mm field guns and 120mm mortars, so many weapons were captured that the Germans simply began making ammunition for them. In the case of the 120mm mortar they even began making copies of the mortar itself. However they issued them to infantry regiments while in Soviet service the 120mm was an artillery weapon, alongside its 160mm and 240mm friends.

Modifications to captured tanks were really excessive. The Germans would happily design a custom and elaborate SP gun conversion of a captured tank of which they had only ten hulls to work with. A huge amount of engineering design effort would then be wasted just to supply a random division with a couple mobile guns it could never get spare parts for.

Mr Bean wrote: In short they kept building Vis's because they needed pistols period. Much like how the Japanese kept producing Nambu's one of the unsafes and general all around shittiness pistol ever made in existence. For those that don't recall (Nambu if it was loaded it could fire, no safety lock, if you dropped it 1/3 times it would fire, even on dirt and it was both inaccurate and under-powered.)

The Type 14 Nambu does have a manual safety. I have talked to people who actually have shot a Nambu and handled several examples. Their opinion was that the pre-war examples were really not that bad aside from the weak cartridge. However, production quality really detoriated from 1943 onwards and some of the late examples were really abysmal.

Of course, as far as small arms go the Nambu was one of the least problems the Japanese had, when they still had stuff like the Type 11 LMG in widespread service. The underpowered 8x22 mm Nambu cartridge was also a much bigger problem for the Type 100 SMG than it was for the Nambu pistol, since pistols didn't (and don't) have any real military significance. Of course an even more significant problem was that the Japanese started making SMGs only in 1942, despite the fact that SMGs were ideally suited for things like jungle fighting.

Marcus Aurelius wrote:Of course an even more significant problem was that the Japanese started making SMGs only in 1942, despite the fact that SMGs were ideally suited for things like jungle fighting.

The big majority of the Japanese army was deployed in China, beating down the grabass Nationalist Chinese forces who constituted probably the worst army to fight in WWII. They didn't particularly need SMGs for that, nor from appearances did they need it very badly in Southeast Asia against the Brits. The Pacific theater was where it would have been most helpful, and that only really got rolling in late 1942, and they probably figured it'd be won or lost in the naval dimension anyway. In retrospect it was something of a mistake to limit the troops to bolt action rifles and their rather machineguns, but it's really debatable whether even an army with quality small arms could have stood up any better than the Japanese typically did considering the weight of American firepower in the theater.

Marcus Aurelius wrote:

Mr Bean wrote: In short they kept building Vis's because they needed pistols period. Much like how the Japanese kept producing Nambu's one of the unsafes and general all around shittiness pistol ever made in existence. For those that don't recall (Nambu if it was loaded it could fire, no safety lock, if you dropped it 1/3 times it would fire, even on dirt and it was both inaccurate and under-powered.)

The Type 14 Nambu does have a manual safety. I have talked to people who actually have shot a Nambu and handled several examples. Their opinion was that the pre-war examples were really not that bad aside from the weak cartridge. However, production quality really detoriated from 1943 onwards and some of the late examples were really abysmal.

The Nambu model that's particularly infamous for all the things Marcus mentioned is the Type 94, here's a picture of that model.

Pablo Sanchez wrote: In retrospect it was something of a mistake to limit the troops to bolt action rifles and their rather machineguns, but it's really debatable whether even an army with quality small arms could have stood up any better than the Japanese typically did considering the weight of American firepower in the theater.

I don't think it's debatable, since the answer is clearly "no way". Small arms were not that important, but that's what we were discussing. Overall the Japanese army had much more serious problems like insufficient numbers of artillery combined with fairly primitive artillery methods, especially regarding indirect fire. Japanese artillery worked well against the Chinese (often in direct fire mode), but failed miserably against the Soviets and contributed little against the British. The Soviets did not have much better methods either, but at least they had loads of artillery pieces...

montypython wrote:
The Nambu model that's particularly infamous for all the things Marcus mentioned is the Type 94

Yes of course, silly me...
It is worth to note though that there was about four Type 14 pistols for every Type 94. And even the latter had a manual safety.

Marcus Aurelius wrote:

montypython wrote:
The Nambu model that's particularly infamous for all the things Marcus mentioned is the Type 94

Yes of course, silly me...
It is worth to note though that there was about four Type 14 pistols for every Type 94. And even the latter had a manual safety.

Fun fact, see that trigger? It sticks out about 1/3 a cm from the gun which means if you stick it in your pocket wrong way out, it's very easy for fabric to catch and pull the trigger forward. I've had a chance to handle one at a gun show and it feels very much like cheap crap, and it was one of the better ones which had been built in 1943 before everything went down-hill.

Marcus Aurelius wrote:I don't think it's debatable, since the answer is clearly "no way". Small arms were not that important, but that's what we were discussing.

Yeah, debatable may have been an overstatement.

The Soviets did not have much better methods either, but at least they had loads of artillery pieces...

I've heard different things about this. On the one hand the Soviets were limited by technology, in that their communications were for shit with low quality radios and telegraphs, and they their ciphers were easy to crack so anything they broadcast would be decoded, but on the other hand by late war their doctrine was very good.

For whatever the reasons, any gun designed in the late 19th century being used in both World Wars by the same militaristic power that managed to put the world upside down both times= WIN in my book.

The Japanese literally couldn’t afford all the ammunition submachine guns would eat up if they’d been mass issued, cheap as making an SMG could be. They did issue airborne troops and certain special naval landing force units with imported submachine guns in 1941-42, but the guns numbered only a few thousand.

Akkleptos wrote:For whatever the reasons, any gun designed in the late 19th century being used in both World Wars by the same militaristic power that managed to put the world upside down both times=WIN in my book.

How many guns can claim the same honor? If you're going to laud a German gun of WWI and WWII you should at least pick one that either did some fucking work as opposed to looking cool on a guy's belt, or was actually influential in firearms design--like, say, the Mauser, or even the Stielhandgranate if you include grenades. Alternatively you could just admit that you like the Luger because it looks cool rather than trying to pretend that it earned the honor by being a superior weapon. Apart from introducing the 9mm Parabellum and having a distinctive look with the toggle action and swept back 45-degree grip, the Luger just doesn't have that much to distinguish it from any other pistol. The weapon that replaced it, the P38, was superior in every important respect except maybe accuracy, which doesn't matter much for a sidearm anyway, and was more due to the tight tolerances the Luger was built to than to any superiority of design. It's just that costume designers for war movies always liked the Luger better.

Akkleptos wrote:For whatever the reasons, any gun designed in the late 19th century being used in both World Wars by the same militaristic power that managed to put the world upside down both times= WIN in my book.

Like the Mosin-Nagant? The Lebel? The Enfield? The Springfield? You've got a lot of wanking to catch up on, especially since those weapons were used on a large scale in actual combat.

Sea Skimmer wrote:The Germans kept just about every small arms factory they captured going, not to mention the entire Czechoslovakian heavy arms industry producing tank hulls and artillery as heavy as 210mm. Many positions on the Atlantic wall had Czech VZ37 machine guns (this is the gun the Bren is based on) for example, produced as Maschinegewehr 37(t). They had a factory captured in Belgium making the Browning High Power as Pistole Modell 35(b). Even in Norway the Germans kept an arsenal that made 40mm Bofors guns running throughout the war. The Yugo factories were not nearly so productive owning to partisan strength being counted in terms of in army corps.

Ah...so it was more a question of how fucked up the general German management was than any particular fault with the pistols

Although I seem to remember you saying that the P38 and the Luger used an excessive amount of springs in their mechanisms, something like eight vs. two for the Browning HP. Is that true?

PeZook wrote:
Ah...so it was more a question of how fucked up the general German management was than any particular fault with the pistols

Well some of it was bad management, but some of it was good mobilization at work which everyone did. Weapons you could obtain hundreds of thousands of were well worth adapting… a sixteen vehicle production run of Char B1 based 105mm self propelled howitzers with totally custom turrets? Not so much. But you also have to figure the fighting spirit of Nazi troops was high in the early years, and who wouldn’t want to help the Fuhrer by bringing out a few more guns for battle against Russia and the English? Many projects were locally initiated.

I mean meanwhile over in Britain in you have soldiers building things like this around the same time. 15 inch guage.

Although I seem to remember you saying that the P38 and the Luger used an excessive amount of springs in their mechanisms, something like eight vs. two for the Browning HP. Is that true?

Shep was the one pointing that out in previous threads. And yeah, the German pistols are much much more complicated with features like double return springs, but I don’t think its eight to two, more like six to three. The HP certainly has fewer large high tension springs.

All three fully disassembled.

http://www.gunsworld.com/assembly/graphs/Walther2.gif
http://www.gunsworld.com/assembly/graphs/Luger2.gif
http://www.mek-schuetzen.de/Blueprints/ ... _Power.gif

Pablo Sanchez: You're right. I just like Lugers. I think they're quite good for such an old design, even if they never saw much action. Which brings me to...

Elfdart: You too are right. I just like those things. And I also think "trusty-old" is a good compound adjective, as in the other weapons you mentioned. I didn't mean to be sound all fanboyish, but it's quite clear I failed at that.